A year after 'Bleach Day' America is getting vaccinated, but the pandemic is still getting worse
Mark Sumner
If you felt an inexplicable urge to start the day with a Clorox cocktail, that might be because this is Bleach Day. That’s not a celebration of particularly white clothes or singed nose hairs. This is the first anniversary of the day that Donald Trump suggested Americans fight COVID-19 by taking disinfectant and using it “by injection inside” or through a “cleaning” that “gets in the lungs.” In the same press conference, Trump also pondered whether it would be possible to get sunshine inside the body.
While this anniversary might first remind us why the phrase “Let’s party like it’s 2020!” will never catch on, Dan Froomkin at Presswatchers also wants you to remember that, as Trump suggested that the cure to coronavirus lay in disinfectant injections, the reaction of the press was to bend over double in an attempt to make what Trump said seem like a reasonable opinion. There are, apparently, two sides to every issue, including whether it’s dangerous to give people a syringe full of bleach. In the days that followed, accidental poisonings went up, with April 2020 ending with a record number of people who had actually ingested bleach.
There is, sadly enough, no data on whether they were cured of COVID-19.
.......
Here’s something else that may seem hard to swallow: A year later, the number of new cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. each day is actually twice what it was on the day Donald Trump speculated over internal fumigation. Worldwide, new cases are almost exactly ten times higher than they were on that date. The pandemic is still definitely a pandemic.
At this point, the United States still holds the world record for the total number of cases, and for the highest number of deaths. Trump’s legacy of malignant mismanagement centered on a deliberate attempt to kill parts of the populace remains unmatched.
But that doesn’t mean that some people aren’t giving it a real try. Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro, always up for an opportunity to demonstrate the maximum level of bull-headed ignorance, managed to bring that nation’s rate of daily deaths up to the U.S. peak at the beginning of this month, as the incredible tragedy of Manaus spread to other areas.
As Scientific American put it, “The city and Brazil as a whole have become an exemplar of what happens when a country pursues a strategy of denying the pandemic and embracing herd immunity by letting the virus spread unchecked.” Bolsonaro responded by saying that “death is inevitable.” Case counts are down in Brazil over the last two weeks as the fire in Manaus has dimmed, but the there are other cities where case counts are heading up. With less than 7% of the population having tested positive, and just over 8% of the population having been vaccinated, there are still many millions of people subject to Bolsonaro’s ongoing folly.
Meanwhile, India is providing a different sort of lesson. Early in the pandemic, the nation of almost 1.4 billion people maintained a low level of COVID-19 cases through strict social distancing rules, rolling lockdowns, and beating people for not wearing masks. But that didn’t mean that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi didn’t devote himself to downplaying the virus and making fun of those who issued dire warnings. Over time, mask mandates stopped being enforced, social distancing regulations were dropped, and Modi became increasingly dismissive of the whole idea that COVID-19 represented a threat to India.
As Bloomberg reported, Modi showed up at a cricket stadium last month, along with tens of thousands of largely unmasked people, to watch matches between India and England. Like Trump, Modi also held a set of election rallies, in which a total of over three million crowded together. Surprisingly, police did not show up to beat Modi or his followers. Modi and other officials didn’t just permit, but encouraged, a massive religious gathering over the last month in which millions of Hindus took part in a pilgrimage to the Ganges. Through all this, India’s health minister announced that the nation was in the “end game” of the pandemic.
But even as Modi was laughing off the pandemic and his officials were talking like the whole thing was over, cases were already on the rise. Over the last month, they’ve jetted upward in India, and for the last two days India has reported more new cases of COVID-19 than the United States did at its worst. That includes 332,000 cases on Thursday alone. That means that India is currently accounting for more than one-third of all new COVID-19 cases reported anywhere on Earth. And with just 1% of the population having tested positive, and less than 5% of the population vaccinated, India holds a tremendous pool of potential victims to Modi’s downplaying of the virus.
Looking around the world, North America currently accounts for 10% of all cases, with most of those coming from the United States. South America accounts for about 14% of cases, with Brazil topping that chart. About 20% of current cases are located in Europe, distributed across a number of countries. Just 1% of cases come from Africa, where the pandemic has been mainly restricted to South Africa and nations along the Mediterranean coast (though recent increases in a number of nations, including Tunisia and Ethiopia, are concerning).
But right now, 54% of all new COVID-19 cases are located in Asia; a number that hasn’t been seen since shortly after the virus moved beyond China. While a large percentage of those cases come from the massive surge in India, waves of cases are also hitting Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and elsewhere. Even nations like Japan, which had been so successful in keeping case counts low to this point, are experiencing a “fourth wave.” More frightening, many of these nations show no signs of slowing the rate of growth...............
Mark Sumner
If you felt an inexplicable urge to start the day with a Clorox cocktail, that might be because this is Bleach Day. That’s not a celebration of particularly white clothes or singed nose hairs. This is the first anniversary of the day that Donald Trump suggested Americans fight COVID-19 by taking disinfectant and using it “by injection inside” or through a “cleaning” that “gets in the lungs.” In the same press conference, Trump also pondered whether it would be possible to get sunshine inside the body.
While this anniversary might first remind us why the phrase “Let’s party like it’s 2020!” will never catch on, Dan Froomkin at Presswatchers also wants you to remember that, as Trump suggested that the cure to coronavirus lay in disinfectant injections, the reaction of the press was to bend over double in an attempt to make what Trump said seem like a reasonable opinion. There are, apparently, two sides to every issue, including whether it’s dangerous to give people a syringe full of bleach. In the days that followed, accidental poisonings went up, with April 2020 ending with a record number of people who had actually ingested bleach.
There is, sadly enough, no data on whether they were cured of COVID-19.
.......
Here’s something else that may seem hard to swallow: A year later, the number of new cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. each day is actually twice what it was on the day Donald Trump speculated over internal fumigation. Worldwide, new cases are almost exactly ten times higher than they were on that date. The pandemic is still definitely a pandemic.
At this point, the United States still holds the world record for the total number of cases, and for the highest number of deaths. Trump’s legacy of malignant mismanagement centered on a deliberate attempt to kill parts of the populace remains unmatched.
But that doesn’t mean that some people aren’t giving it a real try. Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro, always up for an opportunity to demonstrate the maximum level of bull-headed ignorance, managed to bring that nation’s rate of daily deaths up to the U.S. peak at the beginning of this month, as the incredible tragedy of Manaus spread to other areas.
As Scientific American put it, “The city and Brazil as a whole have become an exemplar of what happens when a country pursues a strategy of denying the pandemic and embracing herd immunity by letting the virus spread unchecked.” Bolsonaro responded by saying that “death is inevitable.” Case counts are down in Brazil over the last two weeks as the fire in Manaus has dimmed, but the there are other cities where case counts are heading up. With less than 7% of the population having tested positive, and just over 8% of the population having been vaccinated, there are still many millions of people subject to Bolsonaro’s ongoing folly.
Meanwhile, India is providing a different sort of lesson. Early in the pandemic, the nation of almost 1.4 billion people maintained a low level of COVID-19 cases through strict social distancing rules, rolling lockdowns, and beating people for not wearing masks. But that didn’t mean that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi didn’t devote himself to downplaying the virus and making fun of those who issued dire warnings. Over time, mask mandates stopped being enforced, social distancing regulations were dropped, and Modi became increasingly dismissive of the whole idea that COVID-19 represented a threat to India.
As Bloomberg reported, Modi showed up at a cricket stadium last month, along with tens of thousands of largely unmasked people, to watch matches between India and England. Like Trump, Modi also held a set of election rallies, in which a total of over three million crowded together. Surprisingly, police did not show up to beat Modi or his followers. Modi and other officials didn’t just permit, but encouraged, a massive religious gathering over the last month in which millions of Hindus took part in a pilgrimage to the Ganges. Through all this, India’s health minister announced that the nation was in the “end game” of the pandemic.
But even as Modi was laughing off the pandemic and his officials were talking like the whole thing was over, cases were already on the rise. Over the last month, they’ve jetted upward in India, and for the last two days India has reported more new cases of COVID-19 than the United States did at its worst. That includes 332,000 cases on Thursday alone. That means that India is currently accounting for more than one-third of all new COVID-19 cases reported anywhere on Earth. And with just 1% of the population having tested positive, and less than 5% of the population vaccinated, India holds a tremendous pool of potential victims to Modi’s downplaying of the virus.
Looking around the world, North America currently accounts for 10% of all cases, with most of those coming from the United States. South America accounts for about 14% of cases, with Brazil topping that chart. About 20% of current cases are located in Europe, distributed across a number of countries. Just 1% of cases come from Africa, where the pandemic has been mainly restricted to South Africa and nations along the Mediterranean coast (though recent increases in a number of nations, including Tunisia and Ethiopia, are concerning).
But right now, 54% of all new COVID-19 cases are located in Asia; a number that hasn’t been seen since shortly after the virus moved beyond China. While a large percentage of those cases come from the massive surge in India, waves of cases are also hitting Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and elsewhere. Even nations like Japan, which had been so successful in keeping case counts low to this point, are experiencing a “fourth wave.” More frightening, many of these nations show no signs of slowing the rate of growth...............
